The 2024 L’Œil d’or jury comprising Nicolas Philibert, Dyana Gaye, Elise Jalladeau, Francis Legault and Mina Kavani decided to award two films ex aequo. The L’Œil d’or is the core documentary prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival.
The award(s) went to Ernest Cole: Lost and Found by Raoul Peck in Special Screenings and Les Filles du Nil by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir in Critics Week.
Lost and Found by Raoul Peck (France, 105 minutes). Production: Velvet film. Jury citation: “A film that follows the journey of a young South African photographer during the apartheid era. In 1967, at the age of 27, Ernest Cole published a book on the horrors of his country’s regime, the publication of which forced him into exile in the United States and Europe, never to return to his native country. Based on a few testimonies, but even more on the artist’s own words and the extraordinary photographic work recently rediscovered in a Swedish bank, the director tells the story of the wanderings of this fragile, rebellious artist, the loneliness and despair that slowly consumed him to the point where he gradually gave up photography. This tragic destiny, using Ernest Cole’s own words and pictures, deeply moved us…”
Les Filles du Nil (The Brink of Dreams) by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir(Egypt/France/Denmark/Qatar/Saudi Arabia, 102 minutes) Production: Felucca Films. Jury citation: “The second [film] takes us to a Coptic village in southern Egypt, in the footsteps of a small group of girls who rebel by forming a street theater troupe. Dreaming of becoming actresses, dancers or singers, they try to find their place, defying their families and the patriarchal traditions of their country. A film both simple and luminous, that could almost look like “a walk in the park”, but instead shows us the complexity of their struggle to conquer freedom, and the turbulences generated around them.”
L’Œil d’or – Cannes Documentary Award was created in 2015 by LaScam in collaborationwith the Cannes Festival, with the support of Ina and Audiens.
